The Maiden in the Moon

DOUGIE FRESH Upton quotes Mae West in her Twitter bio: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” (Click image to enlarge.)

Kate Upton has blithely conquered lad mags, YouTube, Twitter, and even high fashion, which sniffed a bit at her Dougie-dancing, bikini-rocking emergence as the 21st-century Betty Grable. Now that Upton has wrapped her latest film role, in The Other Woman, alongside Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann, Annie Leibovitz turns her into a V.F. classic, while Jim Windolf hears about her life in orbit.

Kate Upton is the people’s supermodel. The 21-year-old bombshell has more than a million Twitter followers to go with her YouTube fame as the most enthusiastic dancer of the Dougie this side of Michelle Obama. And over the last year or so, in an unusual move, she has risen from her position as the bros’ favorite swimsuit queen and has broken down the gates guarding the cloistered world of high fashion.

She got her start in 2008, at the age of 15, when she signed with Elite Model Management fresh off a Miami casting call. When her contract ran out, in 2010, she went to meetings with various other agencies. “I’m not going to name names, but one agency told me, ‘You’re too American, and everybody knows American women are lazy,’ ” Upton says. “I was so offended! I’ve never been so offended! I was like, ‘You know that you’re in America, right?’ And it wasn’t ‘American models’—it was ‘American women are lazy,’ period! I feel like a lot of women would disagree with that. A lot!”

She walked out of there and into the Park Avenue offices of the powerful International Management Group, home to Gisele Bündchen, Kate Moss, and Karlie Kloss. “I walked in and they said, ‘You’re so American, which is great! You’re exactly what we’re looking for!,’ ” Upton says. “A totally different response, and I was like, ‘That’s who I’m signing with.’ ”

Under the guidance of her new team, she made the 2011 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, with a “bikini” painted onto her curvy, five-foot-ten frame. Other men’s publications immediately took a liking to her, to put it mildly, with Esquire dubbing her “The Woman of Summer,” and GQ naming her “Body of the Year.” (Her eyes are up here, guys.) Her fame increased when she was captured, on video, doing the Dougie at a Los Angeles Clippers game, which caused the Internet to fall in love.

Hollywood called. Upton had a cameo in Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist and played a sultry nun with a heart of gold in the Farrelly brothers’ The Three Stooges. Her loveliness was especially evident in the latter film, given that one of her fellow nuns was played by Larry David. Sports Illustrated had the good sense to make her the cover girl of its 2012 and 2013 swimsuit specials, and she did the television rounds, bantering with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, and Daniel Tosh. Her Web presence increased when another Upton-related video went viral. This one was made by a Los Angeles high-school senior named Jake Davidson, who invited her to his prom. “I’m Jewish, five-nine on a really good day, and I can’t dance,” he said.

She became the face of Guess and the feet of Sam Edelman, but the rulers of the catwalks approached somewhat cautiously. Was she too much woman for an industry long infatuated with stilt-like legs, bony torsos, and sunken cheeks? When New York Times fashion writer Guy Trebay weighed in on the Upton phenomenon last year, he could not resist saying that she resembled “a pinup, but with the legs of a W.N.B.A. point guard.” Me-ow! In the same article, Sophia Neophitou, who has a role in casting Victoria’s Secret runway shows, was quoted saying that she “would never use” Upton, despite the fact that the model had already posed for the brand’s catalogue. Neophitou, the editor of London’s influential 10 Magazine, was also quoted in the story likening Upton to “a footballer’s wife, with the too-blond hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy”—remarks that went well beyond the usual fashion-industry cattiness and into the realm of Friars Club roast, hinting at the Establishment’s discomfort with a woman who is something like an all-American version of Sophia Loren.

But Upton had two powerful champions in Anna Wintour (Vogue) and Carine Roitfeld (formerly the editor of French Vogue). The cameras loved her, too—specifically, the cameras of A-list photographers Bruce Weber, Steven Meisel, and Terry Richardson, among others. And so the unfazed and ever cheerful Upton ventured, little by little, into the high-fashion arena. She was the subject of pieces that ran inside the July 2012 issues of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, before making the covers of the Italian, British, and Brazilian editions of Vogue. Roitfeld then selected Upton for the cover of the inaugural issue of her new publication, the lush CR Fashion Book. By the time Upton graced the cover of the June 2013 American Vogue wearing a Dolce & Gabbana bodysuit for the occasion, she was fully tested.

FAIREST OF THEM ALL Model-actress-all-American-bombshell Kate Upton, photographed in New York City. (Click image to enlarge.)

Kate Upton was born in the small city of St. Joseph, Michigan, which belongs to the congressional district represented by her Republican uncle, Fred Upton. He is the senior Michigan representative, having served since 1987, and he shows his political muscle as the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. On her 21st birthday, the model ran into her uncle in an elevator car at New York’s Mandarin Oriental, the five-star hotel, with apartments, where she was living at the time. The congressman was in town for a fund-raising event.

“Oh my gosh, it was so funny,” Upton recalls. “I had just come from the gym, and I go into an elevator, and I see that the whole place is packed, and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I looked up, and my uncle is standing right next to me in the elevator! And I was like, ‘What are you doing here?’ It was crazy. And he didn’t really recognize me, because I had a hat on—it took him a second to realize. He was literally just a few floors from my apartment.” Asked if she attended the fund-raiser, Upton says, “I went with him, of course.”

At the event, House Speaker John Boehner serenaded her with his very own birthday song, which goes like this: “This … is … your birthday song! It doesn’t last too long! Hey!”

Asked if she is on board with her uncle’s politics—Congressman Upton seems unfriendly to same-sex marriage, having voted to reaffirm the Defense of Marriage Act in 2012—she says, “Um.” There is a lengthy pause before she continues: “I definitely leave the politics to him. It’s a little bit of a touchy subject.” Asked if she has discussed same-sex marriage with him, Upton says, “No! That is definitely not what comes up at our family reunions. That is not what we talk about.” Asked if she agrees with her uncle’s view of marriage, she says, “I don’t want to even go anywhere near that.”

Her family also has major business ties: roughly 100 years ago Uptons co-founded the Whirlpool Corporation, a Fortune 500 company that generates more than $18 billion in annual revenue. Does that mean she’s an heiress, with a billion dollars in her back pocket? “I wish!” she says with a laugh. “It’s amazing, and it’s definitely a part of our family, but my family doesn’t have anything to do with the company anymore.”

Although she has traveled the world, from Antarctica to the Philippines, she still spends her downtime in the state of her birth; recent tweets link to photos of her on vacation near Lake Michigan, where she has been swimming, learning to golf, and horseback riding. She spent summers there as a kid and remains a big fan of the University of Michigan Wolverines football team, but grew up mainly in Melbourne, Florida. An accomplished equestrian, she was a juvenile riding champion, taking the title of the American Paint Horse Association’s Under Reserve All-Around Champion and winning in its Western Riding category.

Her appeal lies in her having a natural, wholesome quality—with a slight edge. During a session with Terry Richardson, for instance, she paused long enough, while wearing a skimpy red bikini, to allow him to shoot an impromptu video of her doing a playful version of the Cat Daddy dance (a step made popular by the California hip-hop group the Rej3ctz). The footage went viral, which so alarmed YouTube that it removed the clip—only to put it back up the next day after an outcry (and the site’s realization that the video had nothing in it that violated YouTube norms; it only seemed that way).

“The funny thing is, I dance all throughout the day,” Upton says. “I just like to goof around and have a good time. It’s not like I’m a good dancer. It’s just me. It’s just what I do.”

UPTON GIRL The 21-year-old got her start in 2008 at the age of 15, when she signed with Elite Model Management. (Click image to enlarge.)

And while other celebrities have had trouble with the Wild West quality of Twitter, which allows anyone and everyone to take potshots at stars in the social-media version of bearbaiting, Upton, a child of the Digital Age, doesn’t allow her online self to be ruffled. “Negative comments come all the time, but they’ve numbed me out,” she says. “I don’t even notice it anymore. I enjoy Twitter. I have periods where I’m always tweeting, and then I’m dry for a while. Clients have caught on, and they’re like, ‘Do not tweet anything on this set!’ And I’m like, ‘Aaaaaaauggghhh!’ ”

In 2012, Upton shot a commercial for Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. that had her eating a Southwest Patty Melt, an experience that, in the logic of advertising, rendered her so hot and bothered that she had to undress, removing even her black thigh-high stockings between bites of burger. The ad got banned, only to find new life online. A Mercedes-Benz commercial that aired during the 2013 Super Bowl showed her superintending a bunch of besotted football players as they give a car a sponge bath. “You missed a spot,” she says at the end, before walking away. Slow.

Now she is adding more movie work to the modeling, with third billing in an upcoming romantic comedy, The Other Woman, starring Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann, and directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, She’s So Lovely). In the movie, which Upton likens to The First Wives Club, she plays the other other woman. “It’s definitely the biggest part I’ve ever had,” she says. “I’m a huge fan of Cameron and Leslie, and to be able to hang out with them every day and to see how they work was such an amazing experience.” Filming was completed in July. “I definitely had post-wrap depression,” she says.

If that seems like a lot for someone who is still college age, look to her Twitter bio, which quotes the words of a bombshell from an earlier era:

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. —Mae West

“I actually don’t know how I came across that,” Upton says, “but right when I saw it, I was like, ‘That’s me. That’s how I feel!’ There’s no such thing as too much. And if you do have too much, it can be awesome.”